I’m a writer and professor of English and creative writing at Grinnell College.
My work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2016, New England Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, Asymptote, Bennington Review, and The Baffler, and has been recognized by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the American Literary Translators Association, and the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry magazine.
I’m the author of the poetry collection Reenactments (Sarabande, 2019) and the translator of Phan Nhiên Hạo’s selected volume of poems, Paper Bells (The Song Cave, 2020).
At Grinnell, I have taught undergraduate poetry workshops and literature courses on multi-ethnic American literatures of the U.S., environmental literature, travel writing, and more. I’ve also taught graduate level poetry workshops for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Summer Sessions.
I graduated with an MFA from the University of Florida and a PhD in Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Born in Vietnam, I grew up in Wisconsin and currently live in Iowa City.
I am also an avid birdwatcher—you can follow me on eBird here.
Right now, I’m at work on a second collection of poems, tentatively titled Refugia, and creative nonfiction book manuscript, called Operation Laughingthrush, about my travels through Vietnam in search of birds and my family’s past.
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Feel free to reach out: hddphan@gmail.com.